Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Audio + Computer choices

Im putting together a little home studio, mainly using a Groove tube mic, Yamaha Motif Rack ES + my Kawai MIDI keyboard and a mic pre-amp

I have a laptop which definately does not have the processing power, or ram to handle the use of multiple audio tracks, the sound card is even worse.

Anyone who has any experience in this please chime in... im not sure if i should

(a) build my own PC

or

(b) Buy a G5 Apple with the quad processor

I know both systems well, but I need the ability to have atleast 15-20 tracks playing at once without a hitch. I'm also concerned with windows stability and the lack of multi processor capability.

Any reccomendations? (i mainly use cubase and soundforge)

Building your own would be so much cheaper...

but if you want something rock solid stable out of the box, go with the mac. To be honest, I don't think that windows stability should even be brought into consideration if you buy good hardware.

wait 6 months for a Dual Pentium5 powered G6

A friend of mine actually bought a new PowerBook G4 and uses that for his home (and portable) studio. A decent external sound card (he's got something expensive, can't recall the name) and condensor microphone required, obviously, but otherwise he's done quite some nice recordings with it, even in Garageband. He was a sworn PC user, too, if it matters. A remotely fast G4 or any G5 should be more than fine for audio recording with a professional sound card.

Build your own with specifically designed audio input cards for recording.